


Not in all your precious dreams

by halfeatenmoon



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Bodyswap, Canon Era, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 20:39:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17794367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfeatenmoon/pseuds/halfeatenmoon
Summary: Marius wakes up and thinks he's been drugged, or kidnapped, to be lying on a thin blanket on an apartment floor. Eponine doesn't realise she's woken up, at first; she dreams often enough of waking in a soft bed in Marius' arms. Cosette wakes to see her own head resting on her chest and manages not to faint.





	Not in all your precious dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sonotadream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonotadream/gifts).



As far as she could tell, Éponine was still dreaming. She her brain was fuzzy, her eyes didn’t quite open right, and she was still sleepy. She was somewhere soft and warm, with early dawn light filtering through the curtains. Without looking, she knew that body beside her, the chest rising and falling beneath her head, belonged to Maris Pontmercy. She would wake soon enough, in her threadbare home, but for now she breathed in a deep, happy breath, leaned up to kiss him on the lips, and then lay her head back down on Marius’ chest to enjoy every moment until she wake up.

As often happened in her dreams, she felt Marius start awake. Unlike in her usual dreams, he said “What is this? Who are _you?_ ”

Éponine propped herself up on one elbow to look back into Marius’ face. He looked shocked, even afraid - which is what gave her the first inkling that this wasn’t exactly a dream.

“I’m Éponine,” she said, slowly. “Remember? I’m your… we’re… I’m your friend.”

“Éponine?” Marius repeated, his voice rising to a squeak. “Then why do you look like me?”

Éponine startled and put a hand to her breast, then her hips. She breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m not _you,_ silly, look at me.”

But she felt an unnerving shiver across her back when she caught sight of her own hand again - slender, soft, a hand that hadn’t burned in the summer and cracked in the winter cold.

“I’m Cosette,” Marius’ voice, said, sounding even more panicked. And then, realising how that voice sounded, “I’m _Cosette._ ”

“You look like Marius to me.”

“I was Cosette when I went to bed last night.” Marius - Cosette - _the other person_ sat up in bed and crossed their arms. “And now you’re me. Or are you some… some witch who’s stolen my body in the night?”

Éponine sat up and looked around her for the first time. It did finally make a kind of sense - her comfortable surroundings, her soft skin, the companion in her bed.

“I’m no witch. I’m Éponine,” she said, softly. “Cosette. You may not like me, but you know me.”

It hurt to see such distrust on Marius’ face, even if she knew it wasn’t him. Marius had looked at her with pity before, but he had rarely regarded her with distrust. “Why would I believe that it’s you?” she asked, at last.

Éponine swallowed. “At the inn, mama woke you at dawn. You’d work for hours before she’d let you eat.”

Marius’ face darkened, and Éponine was suddenly aware that Cosette wasn’t the same size as her, now, nor was she in a body that was out of practice at fighting. But when she scrambled backwards in the bed, keeping her eyes on Cosette the whole time, Marius’ face rearranged itself into a more familiar look of pity.

“Your mama insisted on dressing me in rags. She wouldn’t even let me wear your castoff clothes,” she said, softly. “I think you left me an old dress of yours, once. It was the first time I heard her beat you.”

Éponine took a deep breath, let it out again. She knelt back on the bed next to Cosette, trying to fit together the confusing fact of Marius’ handsome face and her old foster sister’s gentle understanding. She could see the lines of Cosette’s expression in Marius’ face as she tried to do the same.

“You’re Cosette.”

“You’re Éponine.”

They paused.

“So. Éponine,” Cosette said, like she had to keep reminding herself. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. I’ve never heard a story like this.” Éponine bit her lip. “Did you ever listen when mama was reading us her love stories?”

Cosette scoffed. “Of course I did. You think I’d hang around and do what she said when I could eavesdrop on story time?”

“Right. Well, in those, the enchantment always breaks with true love’s kiss.”

“You think we should kiss again?” Cosette was clearly not convinced.

“Why not? It might work.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“I’m very good at kissing, so at least you’ll enjoy it.”

Cosette looked deeply suspicious. Just when Éponine thought she was about to be thrown out of bed, Cosette scooted forwards on her knees and tentatively reached her hand towards Éponine.

Of course, Éponine realised, after a moment. Cosette had never had to be the one to be firm and make an approach before. They were so proper; it must have always been Marius approaching her or a kiss. So Éponine reached out and tangled her fingers in the back of that sleep-ruffled hair, just like she’d always wanted to, and firmly pulled Cosette into a kiss that was, apparently, not a dream.

It was not like she dreamed; it was not even remotely like she ever imagined kissing Marius to be like. It wasn’t Marius; it was Cosette, in all her feminine tenderness and the toughness underneath that Marius would never approach. It was the the scratchy stubble of a man’s skin and the weight of a man’s hand on her shoulders, but the lips that pressed against hers and opened under her tongue, they were all feminine gentleness. When Cosette let out a surprised gasp, it sounded like her, and not like Marius at all.

When Cosette suddenly started and pulled away, Éponine felt particularly disappointed. She suspected she’d just gotten herself a new haunting dream. But Cosette was holding her by the shoulders, her face creased with worry.

“Éponine, if I’m here, and you’re here, then where on earth is Marius?”

“Oh.” Éponine coughed, and felt an embarrassed blush spread across her cheeks far more quickly than it would in her own body. “Don’t worry. He’s not far away.”

 

When Marius woke with a start, lying on a thin blanket on a wooden floor, his first thought was that he’d been kidnapped. The room was small and almost completely bare, and from the sounds outside it seemed it was a room high above the street. Perhaps too high to escape through the window.

Where is Cosette? he wondered, frantically, looking around. Was she unharmed? The kidnappers had only taken him, so perhaps they had left Cosette alone. But she couldn’t rely on assuming she was safe, not when he’d been taken from his own bed and placed in this hovel. It was only when the doorknob began to turn and he squared his shoulders, preparing to fight, that he realised he hadn’t been bound.

Any further questions he had about his kidnappers vanished when he saw Cosette standing in the doorway. He ran over and embraced her without a second thought, kissing her as hard as he dared. Then there was a loud clearing of a man’s throat, and he looked up to see his own face glaring at him.

“Who are you?” he demanded, and then started at the sound of his own voice. “Who am I?”

“Do we have to have this whole conversation again?” said Cosette, with a groan. She walked past Marius, banged a fist on a wood panel in the wall and took out a dark, unmarked bottle. Then she took a swig from it and slouched on the room’s lone chair. “Look. I’m Éponine, only I look like Cosette. Cosette is in _your_ body, and you’re in mine. Does that clear it up?”

Marius looked wildly between them both, then at his own hands.

“The mirror’s under that drape,” Éponine said, gesturing to the corner.

Marius pulled off the covering just long enough to confirm in the filthy surface that he was, indeed, in Éponine’s body.”

“So when I kissed you…” he said, uncertainly. He forced himself to look into his own face. “My darling, I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. I understand,” Cosette said, gruffly. “I must confess I kissed her too, before I understood what was going on.”

“And afterwards,” Éponine added. She smirked when they both turned to her. “It was for your sake, of course, to see if it would break the curse.”

“You… _you_ kissed?” He felt very odd, trying to picture it. The two girls… but it wasn’t the two girls, it was him and Cosette… but…

“Well, it didn’t work, so we don’t need to do it again,” Éponine said. “Unless you want to, of course.”

Cosette coughed. “Look, can we put the kissing aside for a moment and think about what we can do?”

“And also, where are we?” Marius added.

“My home, of course,” Éponine said, at the same time as Cosette said “Only the other side of the street from our house, darling.”

“You live across the street from us? Are you _spying_ on us?” Marius asked, in horror. And then, as the effect of the surroundings dawned on him, “Éponine, this is how you live?”

Éponine put the bottle down at her feet and leaned forwards on her elbows, regarding them both carefully. “I don’t like to think of it as spying,” she said, after a moment. “I was worried, after the rebellion, that my father and his gang would come after you again. I took the money I could gather and took this room, so I could keep watch.”

“Thats’… that’s so kind of you, Éponine,” Marius said, struggling for words. “But this room it’s… it’s awful. Isn’t there somewhere better you could be than looking over us?”

Éponine let out a short bark of a laugh. “Better? What better prospects do you think I have? You’ve seen my family. You know where I lived before, all four of us in on tiny stinking room. My mother is in prison now and I wish my father were too, so I never had to fear the sight of him again. This is the best life I can hope for, and I may as well spend it here, where I can watch over you. It’s worth something.” She looked away. “I do care about you, you see. Both of you.”

They all stood in silence for a while at that little confession.

“You can go, if you like,” Éponine said, waving at them. “Go back to your comfortable home and explore each other’s new bodies or something. I’m sure it’ll be terrible exciting. You know where I’ll be if you need me.”

“Éponine,” Cosette said, gently, “I hate to ask, but did _you_ do this somehow?”

“I’m no witch,” she snapped.

“I know! But I would understand, you see, if you live like this, wanting to live like us for a day. When I lived at the inn I would have done the same thing, had I known.”

“No! I said I’m no witch. And if I were going to bewitch myself into marriage with Marius, I’d keep us all in our own bodies.” Éponine rolled her eyes. “And I wouldn’t put myself in Cosette’s. Although…” she smoothed her hand over her breasts. “I am coming to appreciate it.”

“Éponine,” Cosette growled, but that tone of voice didn’t worry Eponine any more. She was coming to be quite fond of it.

“Yes?” she asked, innocently. 

Marius interrupted, suddenly, with “Come home with us, instead.”

Éponine laughed. Cosette, on the other hand, despite her previous irritation, looked at Marius fondly.

“Yes, Éponine, do come with us. It’ll be a much better place for you to stay, and we can work out how to change back together.”

Éponine looked back and forth between them. “You’re serious,” she said, in wonder.”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “You are kind, Cosette, to a fault, as you always were. But can’t you see that it wouldn’t be a kindness to live under your roof? Surely by now you know that I care for Marius - and you - enough that it pains me to see you together?”

To her frustration, she found that she was blinking back tears, and swiped angrily at her eyes.

“I could not,” Éponine said, firmly. “I can live in this room and watch the love between you and survive, because I’m hidden. I cannot bear to feel so unloved and live under your roof. So no, thank you, I will not accept your generous offer. As I said, when you need to find me, you know where I’ll be.”

She wished they would just leave, now. This had been funny before, but it wasn’t any longer, not when they were having a whispered conversation by the door. Éponine took another swig from her bottle. She needed this to end.

“Éponine?”

She looked up to see Cosette kneeling before her, in Marius’ lanky form.

“Éponine,” she repeated, “If you come with us, I see no reason that we should leave you feeling so unloved.”

Éponine searched the face before her, the face of Marius that she longed for with the mannerisms of Cosette who knew her better than Éponine could bear. She rarely felt hope for anything more in life, so much so that she had forgotten how to guard against it. She couldn’t do anything but hope.

“Is that so?” she said, softly. She glanced at Marius; he gave a shy smile that looked strange on Éponine’s own face, but was charmingly, undeniably Marius.

Marius cleared his throat. “It is so,” he said, stiffly. “As it happens, Cosette and I care quite a bit for you, too.”

“And as you said,” Cosette said, with a smirk. “You are a very good kisser. Don’t you agree, my love?”

Marius looked at his shoes. “I must confess I do.”

“So will you come with us? Will you at least try?” Cosette asked, extending her hand.

After a long, hesitant moment, Éponine took it.


End file.
